you took my heart and put it back together again
by with the monsters
Summary: -he's not good with words. she knows that.- ArthurMorgana.


Y_ou're the kind of friend who always bends when I'm broken – like remember when you took my heart and put it back together again?_  
(Ultimate, Lindsay Lohan)

**A/N: **For Mila, Whatever Makes You Break, because she is a brilliant ArMor writer and because she is absolutely too nice about me!

Not entirely happy with it, though – I think I'm out of touch with the characters, so I apologise in advance for that.

--

He is beautiful, and she is glad when Uther pushes her to dance with him.

"My Lord Cynric," the king says as charmingly as he can (which, admittedly, is not overly so) and takes Morgana's hand to introduce her to the man. "May I have the pleasure of introducing the Lady Morgana, my ward."

Cynric smiles, his eyes smouldering, and she takes in a deep breath as he presses his lips to the back of her hand. "My Lady," he breathes almost reverently, and she feels her cheeks suffuse with colour. He really is very handsome.

"My Lord," she replies, her chin up and her eyes challenging. She is not the type of woman to show deference to a man, no matter how his looks throw her mind into disarray. He sweeps her into a dance and she absolutely cannot help the smug grin she sends Arthur's way.

The prince's fists clench and the smirk grows as Cynric's hands press her against him and the dance carries them past Arthur. Morgana tries to keep a straight face as Arthur turns to the nearest girl he can find to ask for a dance. He ends up dancing near her, and the music parts them from their partners briefly.

"Cynric's an idiot," Arthur warns as their movements have them right next to each other.

"Well at least he's not an arrogant boor, like _some _blonde-haired princes I could mention."

He glares at her for the next few minutes, over the shoulder of his pretty, dark-haired partner, and Morgana levels a lazy wink at him before returning her attention to Cynric.

"How would you feel about getting some air?" he suggests quietly, and she beams radiantly at him, accepting his hand as he leads her outside to the balcony. He drapes his cloak around her bare shoulders as they stand together and gaze up at the stars.

Morgana is careful about love and falling for men that don't deserve it. She calculates the risks and tries to avoid meeting the eyes of men who will be impossible to love because when she falls, she falls _hard. _She has been in love four times before. When she was twelve, newly-come to Camelot, she fell in love with Arthur.

But he only cared about his horses and his sword and he had no time for a lonely little girl with too-green eyes and bad nightmares. So she cried herself to sleep for two nights and then she put on a brave face and battled her feelings down until they went away again.

Then there was Owain, and he told her she was beautiful and gave her pretty flowers and kissed her under the wine-dark skies. But he went away anyway to fight for Uther and he never came back. She'd thought he was dead, but then news filtered through that he was newly married with a bouncing baby girl and she'd turned all her love to hatred.

She'd fallen in love with Arthur again after that because he'd grown up and he'd sat with her by the lake and pretended to not notice that she was crying until she turned her face into his shoulder. Then he'd put his arm around her and hugged her close until the tears stopped and she was almost in his lap. He'd put her in front of him on his horse and let her fall asleep against him on the ride home, and she'd been lost.

But then there were the eyes at other girls and the stupid comments and she'd become so utterly infuriated that she forced her feelings away. Then another man came to court. He spoke with words that flew and sent desire-filled glances her way and told her loved her, he'd do anything for her.

But he went away too and she promised herself she'd never fall in love again.

"It's cold," she says suddenly, turning to Cynric. He meets her eyes and smiles, his arms sliding around her until she is leaning comfortably against his strong body. He hums quietly in her ear, a soothing lullaby to the volatile magic in her veins, and she doesn't protest when he kisses her.

Instead she loops her arms around his neck and kisses him back until she is drowning in a blazing flood of heat and love and desire.

He leaves the next day with the promise of returning and she waves to him from her place by Uther's side at the top of the stairs. She ignores Arthur's silent fuming on Uther's other side and drifts back up to her rooms in a haze of happiness and love and his face in her mind.

She pretends Arthur's face doesn't keep intruding.

Suddenly she feels entirely too cooped up in the castle so she hurries down to the stables and bullies the stablehands into getting her pretty white horse ready for her without telling anyone that she's leaving. After all, she's practically a princess and Uther would kill her if he knew she was out riding without a guard.

She gallops out of the courtyard and through the town in a blaze of red and white and purple and soon she is racing over the hillside with the wind blowing her perfectly-arranged hair into a mess of dark curls and she feels _free_.

She reigns the horse to a halt down by the lake and dismounts. She trails her fingers in the clear water, dreamily humming to herself and feeling somewhat pathetic for being such a lovesick fool for a man she's known for _one night _but utterly unable to help herself.

"Morgana!" a voice shouts angrily, disrupting her from her quiet contemplation of the water.

"Oh, god," she says as Arthur rides up, sword in hand. "What is the _matter _with you?"

"What's the matter with me?!" he asks incredulously, dismounting from his horse and knotting its reins around a tree branch before rushing up to her and running his hands down her sides quickly to check that she is unhurt. "What's the matter with _you_?"

"What do you mean?" she inquires crossly, pushing his hands off her. "And don't touch me like that."

He withdraws his hands and crosses his arms, glaring at her in a patronising way that has her blood boiling.

"Morgana," he says in an entirely patient way that makes her want to brain him, "you blazed off with no guard and no protection of any sort. It's lucky I was around so I could come after you."

She resists the urge to beat the crap out of him (because she knows she _could, _if she really put her mind to it) and instead turns her back on him and resumes her pensive staring out over the lake.

"He's married, you know," Arthur says suddenly from behind her. She turns instantly, her hands clenched into fists.

"_What_?! Arthur, I know you're jealous because I'm actually _happy_ – but there's no need to make things up."

But she knows he's not lying. She's known him since she was little, so she knows that when he lies his nose scrunches up just a little at the top and he can't meet anyone's eyes.

But his face is open and impassive and he is staring into her eyes directly and firmly.

"It's true, Morgana. He's married. He has two sons."

She's not very good at receiving bad news. She never quite knows how to react. So she stands silently for several moments, absorbing the fact, feeling the pain that begins somewhere near her heart and gradually spreads to gnaw at her fingers at toes.

"Then why …" she asks, then trails off. Arthur won't understand. He's just so … _Arthur. _Insensitive and brainless and completely clueless about love and life and this strange sort of heartbreak. She doesn't understand how it can hurt so badly if she only knew the man for a couple of _hours, _for God's sake.

And suddenly Arthur's arms are wrapping around her and her face is smooshed right up against his chest and his fingers are running clumsily through her hair, and she doesn't understand until she raises her hand to push him away and feels the tears on her cheeks.

And then the sobs tear away at her chest and claw up her throat and escape from her mouth in a tumbling, incoherent mess; and Arthur pulls her down so they are kneeling and lets her cry into his chest until she is a sniffling, snotty mess.

He threads his fingers into her hair and murmurs unhelpful but appreciated phrases into her scalp, and she is finally getting control of herself when he mutters something that she cannot believe at all. She draws back from him and regards him in some astonishment.

"What did you say?" she asks in a voice thick from crying, dragging her arm across her eyes and not caring that it's unladylike and unattractive because it's _Arthur _and it doesn't matter. He doesn't reply, just refuses to meet her eyes and hands over a handkerchief.

"I didn't say anything," he tells her eventually, still not meeting her eyes. Her glare burns into the side of his face and he finally glances up to find her looking remarkably collected despite the tear-stains on her cheeks.

"Arthur," she says calmly. "Repeat what you just said or I will tell Uther that you were the one who set fire to his stack of very important documents."

"You can't!" he begs, grabbing her upper arms in his hands. "Please, Morgana, you can't – you know it was an accident! He'll _kill _me."

She grins at him slowly. "So tell me."

He drops his eyes to the ground again and brushes a hand past his face, clenching it in his hair. She's amazed by how utterly distraught he looks.

"Can I tell you something else instead?" he says suddenly. "It has to do with the other thing, I promise on my honour."

"What honour?" she snorts, but relents and nods at the torn look on his face.

"I'm not very … I'm useless with words. Usually I just take a sword to something to fix it, you know? So I don't really know how to tell you this without sounding like an idiot, but …" he trails off, but picks up the thread at her encouraging (although disbelieving) expression. "I want to kill this Cynric."

She rolls her eyes and he quickly grabs her hand. "You think it's because I'm jealous – and I _am_, but that's not the main reason – and actually it's because he's hurt you and he's made you cry and _nobody _is allowed to do that to you. I know that I don't act it, but … the truth is, you mean an awful lot to me. You're the only woman who stands up to me and can hold her side of an argument with my father and … I can't stand to let anyone hurt you."

"So you're overprotective – Arthur, we _both _knew that already."

"No, it's not that!" he says, and he cups her face with one hand as he desperately searches for the right words. "There's only one way I can think of to say this, and you won't believe it because you get told it fifty times a day and it stops meaning anything after the tenth time, but … I love you. I love you, Morgana. I wish I didn't, because it kills me to see you with all those other men, but I do."

He finishes his little speech with a shrug, her cheek still warm against his rough palm, and frowns self-consciously.

He is about to withdraw his hand when suddenly she reaches up and clasps her own above it, holding it in place.

"Arthur, I – "

She halts and scowls furiously for a moment as she tries to gather the right thing to say.

"I've loved you before," she says. "And I probably still do. But right now … I can't tell you I love you and live happily-ever-after and all that now. Not yet. But give me time, I beg you."

"For you I'd wait three hundred years," he promises, and kisses her despite her protests. She thinks about Cynric and her sore heart and all those times she's loved Arthur but found him too infuriating to cope with.

And then he draws back and smoothes his thumb over the frown-lines on her forehead where she's worrying, and grins.

"Stop thinking. You're ruining the moment."

"Gosh, Arthur, I'm so terribly sorry. I forget you like your women brainless and compliant."

He just laughs and holds out a hand to help her to her feet.

"You just can't help yourself, can you?" he inquires, and she tries to scowl but ends up laughing.

"I guess we bring out the worst in each other," she confesses, and links her fingers into his anyway.

"I'll kill Cynric for you, if you like," he says.

"You'd do that?" she asks, although she doesn't mean for him to actually do it.

"Of course not," he replies instantly, and then continues before she has time to roll her eyes. "He's far beneath my dignity. I'd send one of my people to kill him for me."

She hits him half-heartedly and laughs.

"No, it's okay. I'm sure I'll get over him, it, everything soon. Just … wait for me."

And he nods and throws away all his typical impatience and restless energy and encircles her waist with his arm.

"I will. But you have to promise to stop winding me up."

She elbows him in the side and they're both laughing as he pretends to double over and gasp with pain.

"Man up," she tells him, and he just laughs and pulls her close to him and kisses her again.

"I love you," he says, and she grins and brushes his hair off his face.

"I know."

--

**A/N: **Please no favouriting without reviewing, thanks!


End file.
